Team
Steering Committee
Biography
Biography
Catriona Matheson
Catriona has been involved with DRNS from its inception as Convenor throughout Phase 1 and now in a shared Co-Convenor role for Phase 2. Catriona is a Professor of Substance Use at the University of Stirling (part-time), an independent research consultant, and a trustee of the Society for the Study of Addiction. Her research interests are in the delivery if care to substance users through generalist, as well as specialist, providers. Past research includes exploring new services in primary care (e.g., naloxone distribution) and exploring health professional and the general public’s opinions about drug treatment strategies. Current work includes innovative community pharmacy services, digital innovations and dependence on prescribed and non-prescribed analgesics.
Duncan Hill
Duncan is sharing the Co-Convenor role with Catriona after sitting on the DRNS Steering Committee throughout Phase 1. Duncan is currently a Specialist Pharmacist in Substance Misuse (SPiSM) in NHS Lanarkshire. He started working in community pharmacy after qualifying from RGIT, Aberdeen, and became an addictions pharmacist in 2005 in NHSGGC. He is a qualified Pharmacist Independent Prescriber and has been practicing since 2007. Initially having a clinic with the Homeless Addictions Team in NHSGGC, and currently 3 clinics within NHS Lanarkshire. He leads a team of 8 pharmacist prescribers, working as part of an integrated multidisciplinary substance misuse prescribing service that support the 11 addiction teams in NHS Lanarkshire. He is an Honorary Lecturer at Strathclyde University and was a Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University. He is a member of the Scottish Specialist Pharmacists in Substance Misuse group, the Opioid Painkiller Dependence Alliance core group and the steering group of the National Substance Misuse Non-Medical Prescribers forum.
Dr Matt Smith
Matt is a post-doctorate researcher based within the substance use team at Glasgow Caledonian University. He is primarily a qualitative researcher, and has a background in Sociology and Public Health, and is working on a variety of research projects in the addictions field with a range of organisations and service users. These include: an evaluation of the potential use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for people who inject drugs; a service evaluation of the Enhanced Drug Treatment Service that is currently providing Heroin Assisted Treatment in Glasgow; and an evaluation of a Peer to Peer Naloxone training and development intervention. Matt’s research interests are empowerment of marginalised populations, “race” and ethnicity, migration, innovation in qualitative methodologies, and the social sciences of addiction and substance use.
Dr Joan Love
Joan is the training and research co-ordinator with Aberdeen in Recovery (AiR), a Lived Experience Recovery Organisation (LERO), and is leading on a Scottish Community Development Centre and Poverty Alliance funded project exploring awareness of AiR and what it provides as LERO. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow with the Drugs Harm Prevention Group of the University of Dundee. From her lived and family experience of substance use, she brings a unique perspective on problem drug use and its effects on individuals, families, carers, and communities and an insight into service provision. Joan has experience of both quantitative and qualitative research and is particularly interested in peer research and lived experience involvement in co-production of studies. Her recent research has included co-investigating within a Drug Deaths Taskforce (DDTF) funded study on the impacts of novel coronavirus outbreaks on people who use drugs. She is also representing lived experience for, and advising on, several DDTF and National Institute of Health Research studies, and a Big Lottery funded project assessing innovation and quality standards in community addiction recovery services.
Dr John Burns
John has a background in alcohol and drug service delivery, policy development and implementation, national policy evaluation, academia and service design and improvement. He is currently the Service Improvement Lead for West Dunbartonshire Health and Social Care Partnership. John began his career supporting families affected by parental substance use before going on to deliver psycho-social support within an integrated addiction service. As an ADP Policy Officer, he nurtured a local grassroots recovery community which has gone on to achieve excellent outcomes. John has been committed to involving people with lived and living experience throughout the work he has undertaken. His academic experience includes university lecturing in alcohol and drug studies and he has a Doctorate in Social Policy and Sociology.
Dave Liddell
Dave has been a member of the DRNS Steering Committee throughout Phase 1 and Phase 2 as a non-governmental organisation representative. Dave is the Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Drugs Forum and has worked in the field of drugs, alcohol, and homelessness for over 35 years in England, Ireland and Scotland. He was a key player in the development of harm reduction services in Scotland, advocating the introduction of needle exchanges and substitute prescribing programmes. He served on the UK Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs from 2008 to 2017 and, since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, he has been a Secretary to the Cross Party Group on Alcohol and Drug Misuse. An active member of the European Civil Society Forum on Drugs, Dave is a regular media commentator on issues relating to problematic drug use in Scotland. He has contributed to a number of publications on drug use in Scotland and was made OBE in the Queen’s 2012 Birthday Honours for services to disadvantaged people in Scotland.
Dr Louise Marryat
Louise is a current Baxter Fellow in the Mother and Infant Research Unit, University of Dundee, where she specialises in early child development. She also holds honorary posts at the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and the Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Centre, Sweden. Louise has a BA (Hons) in Politics and Sociology and a MA in Research Methods, and a PhD in Psychological Medicine from the University of Glasgow. Before returning to academia, Louise worked for several years at ScotCen Social Research, working on the Growing Up in Scotland Study, as well as the Scottish Health Survey and several public health interventions. Louise works primarily with longitudinal secondary data to explore the developmental trajectories and outcomes of children with some sort of vulnerability. As part of this work, Louise has been exploring how we can identify children who have been exposed to opioids during pregnancy and examine their birth outcomes, in a feasibility study funded by the CSO. This study has now been extended with an ESRC Fellowship to explore the impact of exposure to opioids during pregnancy on longer term child social, emotional and behavioural development.
Maggie Page
Maggie is the Principal Social Researcher supporting Substance Misuse in the Scottish Government. Since joining the Scottish Government in 2018 she has played a key role providing analytical support for the development and delivery of Rights, Respect and Recovery and has co-ordinated analytical support for the Drug Deaths Taskforce, including oversight of the DDTF Research Fund.
Elinor Dickie FRSA
Elinor is Organisational lead in the Drugs Team at Public Health Scotland. Elinor’s role on the Steering Committee will support links to programme developments in Scotland’s treatment and response and on public health surveillance. Elinor has a Masters in Anthropology of Health and Illness from the University of Edinburgh. She has previously specialised in work on the fundamental causes of health inequalities, Hepatitis C prevention, HIV & AIDS strategic planning and was a research lead within Scotland’s minimum unit price for alcohol evaluation portfolio. Elinor has experience of working in the NHS, third sector and UN System.
Delivery/Operations
Biography
Biography
Biography
Biography
Jessica Greenhalgh
Jess is the DRNS Research Project Administrator. Her background is in Social Research, and she received an MRes from the University of Glasgow in 2018. Since starting with DRNS in 2020, Jess has helped support the arrangement and running of several online (and now in-person!) events, including sessions on the impact of Covid-19 on people who use drugs, palliative and end of life care for substance users, as well as smaller information sessions on how to involve practitioners in research. Jess should be your first point of call if you need assistance promoting your research, dissemination event, or call for help with a project via social media, on the DRNS website or through the DRNS monthly newsletter. Jess can also be contacted to help set up and arrange webinars on different topics, providing technical support, promotion and management of attendees on the day.
Josh Dumbrell
Josh is a Research Assistant specialising in Peer Research with the Drugs Research Network for Scotland (DRNS). His work includes supporting the involvement of people with lived experience of problem substance use and affected family in research. This includes linking research-interested individuals with projects focusing on a range of topics, such as novel interventions, work around prevention, multiple and complex needs and gender-specific research, digital inclusion, and technologies for reducing drug-related harms and deaths, among others. Josh is currently leading a project which aims to establish and develop a national Peer Research Network, and enhance the voice of lived experience in Scottish drugs research, policy and practice. Josh has also supported a number of projects as Lived Experience Lead and peer researcher, undertaking data collection and analysis activities.
Before joining the DRNS, Josh cut his teeth in practice, working for The Salvation Army Edinburgh as a Peer Navigator on the SHARPS (Supporting Harm Reduction through Peer Support) study. Josh regularly draws on learning from this role, particularly as it relates to supporting and empowering people with lived experience.
Tessa Parkes
Tessa is the DRNS Deputy Convenor, shared with Hannah Carver, and Professor of Substance Use at the University of Stirling and has oversight of the operating grant. She is the Research Director for the Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research where she leads several research and knowledge exchange projects focused on the reduction of harms and promotion of health and well-being for those impacted by social and health inequalities.
Tessa has experience in the statutory and non-statutory health, social care and housing/homelessness sectors as a front-line support worker, team leader, and mental health nurse, and has provided consultancy and training to a wide variety of organisations focused on service improvement to better meet the needs of healthcare users with mental health issues including relating to problem use of substances. She participates in committees related to drugs and alcohol, such as the Ministerial Drugs Death Taskforce and is a member of Research England’s Research Excellence Framework Equality and Diversity Panel.
Hannah Carver
Hannah is a Lecturer in Substance Use at the University of Stirling, and shares the role of DRNS Deputy Convenor with Tessa Parkes, as well as being the Co-Director of the Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research alongside Tessa. Her research interests include substance use, vulnerable populations, health inequalities, harm reduction and qualitative methodology. Prior to joining the team at Stirling, Hannah completed a PhD at Edinburgh Napier University which looked at substance use communication between looked after young people and their formal carers.
Hannah Hale
Hannah, a research co-ordinator for the DRNS, is a Socio-Cultural Psychologist. She completed her PhD in 2006 at Cambridge University with a thesis on the social representations of military masculinities. She has worked on several research studies, many looking at supporting families and young people in deprived communities, mental health in organisations, identity and masculinity. Hannah is also a practicing Psychotherapist and Pluralistic Counsellor, specialising in substance use and addiction, trauma, anxieties in context (particularly workplace strains) and depression.
Joe Schofield
I spent the first 20 years of my career working in voluntary sector and NHS public health roles focussing on blood-borne viruses and sexual health in Brighton, London and Glasgow. I completed a secondment to the World Health Organisation’s Global Hepatitis Team via the Scottish Government from 2014-2015 where I wrote the “Manual for the Development and Assessment of National Viral Hepatitis Plans” and co-organised the first World Hepatitis Summit.
From 2017-2020 I was National Research Coordinator for the DRNS, which generated £3.61 million investment in collaborative, cross-agency Scottish drugs research.
In Sep 2020 I successfully completed a Master of Public Health at University of Stirling. Since Oct 2020 I have been working as a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Science at the University and am involved in a portfolio of studies focussing on understanding and addressing drug-related deaths in Scotland.
